


Visions of Our Futures

by orphan_account



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-23
Updated: 2016-08-23
Packaged: 2018-08-10 13:27:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7846885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As he steps out of the TARDIS, the first thing he notices is how young she looks; for a moment, he stops dead, oddly disconcerted. It is not as if he hasn’t seen her this young before; he was there at her beginning, after all. It is because this time, it is as if their roles are reversed. He remembers standing outside her cell just as he is doing now, sauntering off into the TARDIS without a care in the world. It was the first time she kissed him goodbye, a first for him and a last for her. It was the first time he really realized just how star-crossed they really were.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Visions of Our Futures

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the song "Youth" by Daughter.  
> Huge thank you to HellNHighHeels and Professor_river_who for beta reading this for me. Their comments have been a tremendous help!  
> Hope you all enjoy it.  
> -Ryann

He promises that he will pick her up at seven o’clock, and for once he is exactly on time.

As he steps out of the TARDIS, the first thing he notices is how young she looks; for a moment, he stops dead, oddly disconcerted. It is not as if he hasn’t seen her this young before; he was there at her beginning, after all. It is because this time, it is as if their roles are reversed. He remembers standing outside her cell just as he is doing now, sauntering off into the TARDIS without a care in the world. It was the first time she kissed him goodbye, a first for him and a last for her. It was the first time he really realized just how star-crossed they really were.

Now, standing in front of a young River Song, he knows now how River felt that day. Because it is River Song, Melody Pond, in the cell in front of him. She is the same woman in so many ways but not his wife, not quite the woman he had fallen in love with.

This is River Song before she even is River Song. This time, it is his turn to hold the spoilers, his turn to be the one with a heavy heart weighed down by all the things she does not yet know.

She looks up, catches his eye, and her face breaks out into a wide smile. Even her smile causes a pang deep in his hearts, because River does not smile like that, like he is her whole world. She teases and smirks and makes him dizzy and red-faced; but she does not smile like that, not for him. Her love for him hides beneath the façade she wears in all but their most intimate moments.

“Hello, sweetie,” she says, and it sounds wrong coming from her too-young lips. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

He pushes down his misgivings and straightens his bowtie one last time. “Can’t a man spoil his wife without a reason?”

She chuckles, stands. “I suppose so. Where are we off to tonight?”

“Well,” he begins, “there’s this one beach on one of the planets in the Andromeda galaxy. Or, if you don’t want to do that, there’s a restaurant on the edge of a cliff on the Sunflower Planet—it’s got an awfully long name, terrible to pronounce, but the inhabitants call it what would translate to the Sunflo—”

“Doctor,” she interrupts with a fond smile. “Wherever you want to go is fine.”

But it’s not, it’s really not. He wants her to tell him what to do, how to be. She has always been his compass in their wibbly-wobbly timelines, and now that she is not, he finds himself completely and utterly lost.

“All right,” he says, and then turns and walks into the TARDIS without another word, expecting her to follow him. When she doesn’t, he pops his head back out the door to find her with a hand on the side of the time machine, uncertainty clouding her gaze.

“River?” he asks gently, and then sees her come back to herself, shaking herself back to the present.

“Just saying hello to Mummy,” she supplies as an explanation, but her smile doesn’t reach her eyes.

He nods, unsure of what to say, and goes back inside, busying himself with the console until she walks inside.

“So, restaurant or beach?” he asks her, and she smiles.

“I honestly don’t care, darling. Surprise me.”

“All right,” he says, knowing with sudden clarity what he’ll do. “Get dressed. The TARDIS will direct you to something appropriate.”

His tone sounds flat even to him, and he can tell she hears it, too, because she doesn’t even try to flirt with him. She leaves the console room without a word as he flips levers and switches and puts the brakes on because he needs her to hear it and come correct his terrible driving skills.

But she isn’t that River, not anymore—not yet. She won’t be that River ever again. Not to him. Of course, she still has all that to come; the thought makes him feel a little bit better, knowing that even if his days are running out, she still has something to look forward to.

He lands at the restaurant, goes outside to order and then comes back inside and directs the TARDIS to land thirty minutes into the future. The lazy way out, he knows, but he has never been patient.

Hurrying outside for a second time, he is pleased to see that the food is all ready and waiting for him in a picnic basket. He doesn’t know why he never thought of this before; what could be better than taking a picnic to the beach? He has only had one picnic with River before, at Asgard, and that one she had initiated. He wonders now if she will she get the idea from this one. The thought makes him smile despite everything. At least she still has so much more to come, even if he doesn’t.

He bustles back inside with the basket to find River in the console room waiting for him.

“Ready?” he asks, and she nods but doesn’t say anything. She is aware that something is wrong, even if she’s not sure exactly what, and he almost tells her everything right then, spoilers be damned. But he can’t. He knows that. And so he deposits the picnic basket in a secure location (because, if he is honest, he really _isn’t_ the best driver—she was right about that).

As he flies the TARDIS, she sits off to the side, just watching him. She knows how to fly his TARDIS; he knows she does, even this young, but she makes no move to help him. He finds himself wishing that she would come around behind him to fix his mistakes and complain that he isn’t using the stabilizers properly. But she doesn’t, and he reminds himself to stop wishing for the River he once knew. That River is far out of reach now, and it is not fair of him to expect this one to be the woman he so desperately needs to see.

His days with a River who knows him are all but over. The last time he saw her was Manhattan, when the title of “professor” slipped proudly, casually, from her lips. And that was when he knew. Darillium is coming for them; he cannot avoid it any longer. There is no more time for him; he has spent it all. Now his time with her is only stolen moments like this one.

Silently, he holds open the door for her and she steps out onto the sand of the beach. It is just beginning to get dark; the sun is setting and the planet’s twin moons are beginning to rise over the horizon. Her high heels sink into the sand, and so she takes them off, letting them swing loosely from her fingertips. The sand is warm beneath her bare feet, still holding the heat of the setting star, and the last rays of light illuminate her features and frame her face in a golden halo.

“Do you want to go down by the water?” he asks after a beat, and she hesitates for a moment, recalling a white suit and a man behind a robot’s eyes. He grasps her free hand with his own, and finally she nods, holding onto him as if he is the only thing keeping her afloat.

They walk down to the water, him with a picnic basket in his hands, her with her high heels. He chooses a spot just out of reach of the waves, and they eat as they watch the sun set and the moons rise.

It’s beautiful; she’s beautiful. And yet, looking at her under the silvery moonlight, he finds himself unable to feel anything but sad. She is watching the horizon, starlight reflected in her green eyes and looking like an angel, but suddenly he feels like crying.

She must feel him looking at her, because she turns her head and meets his gaze with a half-smile. He half-smiles back, all he can muster.

“Why are you here, Doctor?” she asks after a moment, her voice quiet and reflective.

“Why wouldn’t I be here?” he responds, but it sounds hollow even to him. There are many reasons why he wouldn’t be here, many reasons why he hasn’t been with her in the past.

She turns her head away so that she’s looking at the stars again; he sees her swallow hard. “What I’m asking, Doctor, is this: why don’t you just pack up and leave me? Wouldn’t it be so much easier just to walk away? I am, after all, just another one of your mistakes.”

It makes his hearts break to think that she believes that, because it couldn’t be more untrue. If nothing else, he is certain that he loves her. As firmly as his last body was meant for Rose Tyler, so this one belongs, always and completely, to River Song.

But he doesn’t say that. Not yet. There will come a time for that, for those three precious words. But he waits, wanting to save that moment for when she will truly believe him, for when she, too, is in love.

What he does say is this: “You were never a mistake, River. Don’t you ever think you were just a mistake.”

She sighs, and the sound is weary and hopeless. “Look, sweetie, we can’t go around believing in fairy tales forever. This is real life; mistakes happen, in your case more than most. If I’m just another one of the casualties, tell me now. I’d rather know.”

He doesn’t know what to say, how to find the words that will make her believe him. So he doesn’t. Instead he leans in, trying to ignore the nervous fluttering of his hearts, and leaves a lingering kiss on her lips.

He tries to pour all the love he feels for her into that kiss, to show her how much she will come to mean to him. He knows he has never treated her right; even now, even tonight, he hasn’t been able to give her the love she deserves. He knows he will never be able to give her everything she deserves, because he has caused her so much pain and she deserves so much more than what he can give in return.

When his lips leave hers, she is breathless and vulnerable and starstruck. But now, even so early, she hides the frantic beating of her heart, hides her insecurities behind a mask she will someday learn to wear so well she will not be able to take it off.

“Is that how you kiss all of your mistakes?” she asks lightly, pretending that this isn’t the most meaningful kiss she’s ever shared with anyone, like her first kiss all over again. In a way, it is her first kiss—her first kiss as River Song, as the woman he has made her into.

He chuckles, trying to ignore the tears prickling at the edge of his vision, and he sees that expression on her face that means she would like nothing more than to grab him by his bowtie and pull him down to her again. But she doesn’t; she is too young and not yet courageous enough, though he knows that someday she will be.

“Only for you, River.” If she is indeed a mistake, he thinks she is the most perfect one he has ever made.

He knows that she was indeed born from a regret; she isn’t wrong to assume that, much as it hurts him to admit it. If he is honest with himself, he knows that had their timelines not been intertwined, he never would have fallen in love with her. In the beginning and the middle and even the start of the end, he had loved her only because there was no other way. He had taken her on adventures out of guilt, knowing he was the reason she had died; had they been linear, he knows with certainty that he would have run away. But it is hard to run away when the universe may collapse as a result—not that that had ever stopped her. And so he had married her out of convenience, and in the moment it had been nothing more than a means to an end, the only way to return time to normal. But now, so much later, now that he has known and loved her, that moment atop the pyramid holds far more significance.

Had they been normal, he would not ever have loved her; but they are not normal, and so he does.

She takes a deep breath. “I don’t believe you, you know.”

And there is nothing he can do to make her believe him. Not yet, anyway. He wants to say it, to tell her he loves her, but he finds he cannot make the words leave his lips. Because he does not love her; not yet. And she does not love him. But he loves who she will become, and he knows that that is the woman he must tell. She must go to the Library knowing that she is loved.

And it hits him then. It is time for Darillium at long last. He needs to let her go, because he is hurting her. Every time he leaves, every time he cannot be there when she needs him, every time the word “spoilers” passes his lips, he is breaking her hearts. He is making her think he does not care when really, nothing could be further from the truth.

He loves her; it is time she knew that.

“I’m sorry,” he says, regretful that for tonight and indeed for the rest of their time she will have to go on without knowing. She has given him a great gift, but he was never able to give it to her in return. And yet she stayed.

“It’s all right,” she says quietly, and he knows that it really isn’t. Donna’s voice echoes through his head, how they stood together in the aftermath of the Library.

_Is all right special Time Lord code for really not all right at all?_

Yes. Yes, it is. And as he links his fingers through River’s, pulls her to her feet so they can walk barefoot along the shore, he knows that they are both all right.

*

As she returns to her cell, he wants to say something meaningful, something personal, to her. But he bites back the myriad of things he could say, because it is too early for that. The older he gets, the more he knows how she always felt.

There is a part of him that wishes he doesn’t have to know her this young, a part of him that wishes for an older, wiser River Song. Before, she was always the one who knew him better, with her spoilers and cryptic remarks that alternately infuriated and captivated him. She was always the strong one, and there was always a measure of comfort in that. Now, he can disarm her with a word, a smile. It still surprises him when she blushes at his remarks, when a flicker of hurt crosses her expression before she can hide it, though he knows it shouldn’t. She’s only human, after all—maybe a bit more than human, but even Time Lords cry. Even Time Lords hurt. But he has always expected her to be more than human, even though he has always known that it is not fair to expect the impossible.

He has always known how this would end: back to front, both of them living out their lives even while knowing the way the story would end. For him, the Library is both the ending and the beginning. For her, it is a night on Darillium, the last chapter in her story that she will share with a man who knows her, who loves her.

She has the entire book left, or nearly all of it, while he has almost reached the end. He has only one chapter left, a chapter that has been a long time in coming. And then it will be over; the book will end, and he will never be able to read it again. There is no sequel; there is not even an epilogue.

“Goodbye, River,” he whispers as she turns back towards him one last time. “Until next time.”

She doesn’t say a word, merely watches as he leaves. And as the TARDIS fades out of view, leaving her alone once more, she lets the tears she has been holding back all evening fall onto her cheeks.

“Goodbye, sweetie.”


End file.
